John McCain seems to be the clear choice as far as disability rights go for the Republican side. He has consistently voted for the ADA, and some bloggers have ranked him above Hillary Clinton (but below Barack Obama) on disability rights.  He isn’t in favor of repealing No Child Left Behind (insert grumbling here), but he is in favor of reforming it in order to be more inclusive.  As he is the leading candidate for the Republican party, this is pretty good news.

Hillary Clinton supports the ADA and its restoration acts and greater access to Medicare and Medicaid for people with disabilities. She also supports federal assistance for employers to make their places of employment accessible, thus creating more viable job opportunities for people with disabilities. I am a little put off, however, by her use of the phrase “disincentives to work”, which she takes to mean penalties such as ineligibility for Medicaid for those who are employed. Perhaps I am paranoid, but it seems that “disincentives to work” implies that she believes that there are a lot of people are able to work and are just choosing not to, which is simply not the case. In general, I could not find much on her stance on disability rights, except for this transcript from a conference call from last July.

Barack Obama has a whole document on his plans for the country regarding the rights of people with disabilities. Rather than posting the whole document, I’m going to just post the link from the Livejournal community “40 Million” which gives summaries of his ideas on everything from social security to Medicare to VA reform.

I’m not going to dignify Ralph Nader with a summary.  In my opinion the Green Party in general can be horribly classist, and I feel it is mostly rich white yuppies who vote for Nader because they feel oppressed by “The Man”.  They know their candidate has no chance of winning, and I feel that voting for Nader is a vote thrown away.  My state’s primaries aren’t until May, and to be honest, I still haven’t completely made up my mind.  I am not terribly impressed with any of the candidates.  I just hope whoever is elected keeps their word on their commitment to the disabled community.